strange icon changes in panther

[jxyama]

i've been using panther for a while now. just tonight, i noticed that the System folder on the main HD has mysteriously changed its icon. instead of the usual folder icon, it's an Excel sheet icon.

this seemingly happened spontaneously, as i've never touched this folder at all...

when double-click, it simply opens the folder. i tried resetting back to the original icon by pulling the info screen and 'deleting' the icon but didn't work. probably the permission...?

does anyone know where the system related icons are stored at? i'd like to restore it since it's bugging me a little...

 

[jxyama]

an update... it turns out the strange system folder icon (excel file icon instead of the usual folder icon with a blue 'X') was only for my account. under another account on my computer, it wasn't affected.

i stole that icon and changed it for mine, then repaired permissions (booting from the CD) and fsck -yf. it seems to have stuck. still kind of annoys me that the icon mysteriously changed on its own...

 

[Powerbook G5]

That's weird. I know that sort of thing happened to me a lot during my time with Windows 95/98/ME, but never with the Mac. Maybe it was some defect with the system's icon cache.

 

[GeeYouEye]

Same thing happened to me, only it was a couple apps in the Applications folder; Acrobat Reader 5 turned into a Photoshop jpeg icon, and Address Book turned into the Users folder. Restarting the Finder fixed it.

 

[jxyama]

ok, thanks for the feedback. i'll try re-starting the finder next time.

what's strange is that the icon was a perfect excel doc icon (a spreadsheet with a green top rim) in the icon view mode in the finder, but a messed up icon in the list/column view. strange...

 

[Makosuke]

Every time I leave Panther running for a few days straight, I eventually start to get icon weirdness like this. It's always completely random (usually applications, but can be almost anything) and very sporadic, and always goes away completely after a restart. I never tried relaunching the Finder, which would be a much easier fix, so I'll try that next time.

It's definitely some sort of bug, but doesn't seem to be anything to worry about.

 

[jxyama]

i realize what you meant, but what i'm worried about is the fact it's random. it would really help if apple knew what was going on, but it's very difficult to address a problem that seems to happen sporadically and randomly.

i hope this is not an indication of some strange (and consealed) instability in panther. sure, it's just icons, but if you don't know what's going with icons, what else could be going wrong?

 

[1macker1]

This happened to me just last night. I had a .mov on my desktop, the icon had been changed to a Pixar character, then it all of a sudden change to a disk install icon.

 

[Powerbook G5]

I have never seen this problem on my system running 10.3.1 and I generally keep it running for weeks at a time without restart.

 

[bousozoku]

My Mozilla icon in the Finder window became a Photoshop JPEG icon, but the dock icon remained the correct one.

Since Progress Energy decided to reset their system, I was forced to re-boot, which fixed things. The desktop file names residue has been corrected as well.